GeForce GTX 580 and GPU Throttling with TDP-Apps

Just a quick note about the GPU throttling with the GeForce GTX 580 (extreme GTX 580 cards like EVGA GTX 580 Classified or ASUS GTX 580 Matrix are not concerned by this article). In recent versions of FurMark, EVGA OC Scanner X and MSI Kombustor, I added the monitoring of true GPU clock speed for NVIDIA cards. The true GPU clock speed is useful with graphics cards like the GeForce GTX 580 because this card is severely throttled down when a TDP-app (a new word coming from the GTX 680 launch) like FurMark is running. For example, with EVGA’s GTX 580 SC, under a typical gaming situation, the GPU runs at 797 MHz. When FurMark is running, the GPU clock speed is throttled down at 398 MHz (GPU-Z still displays 797MHz):

Same thing in OC Scanner X. During few seconds, the GPU runs at full speed and after it’s throttled down:

In MSI Kombustor, I added the throttling indicator in the GPU list, on the top-right part of the screen:

Fortunately, the brand-new GeForce GTX 680 (I really love this card!) nicely handles FurMark-like applications then this short note about the throttling of the GTX 580 will be shortly irrelevant!

Here’s how I ended up on this page..
The throttling shown in FurMark tends to coincide with throttling that occurs while IN GAME, if one of the MSI Talons’ 5 LED power indicator dropping to 3 or 2 and the game running like trash. Such that it’s now easier to just run it out of SLI. Been testing both cards, swapped them around, tried them one at a time, only in SLI!

So this is just happening with Furmark-like benchmark apps due to some “blacklisting” in the nvidia drivers? Has no effect on actual 3D game/simulation performance? I wonder if it’s to make the 600 series seem faster than it is in raw benchmarks. Isn’t the 600 optimized for games but each cuda core lacks the grunt of the 580?